Felix Mendelssohn
Click Here for Felix Mendelssohn Music
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) is better known as Felix Mendelssohn and for his piano music and work as a composer and conductor. Today, his originality is finally being recognized and has made him one of the most popular composers of the early Romantic period. Some of Mendelssohn’s works include concertos, oratorios, symphonies, and of course piano music. Everyone has heard at least one of Mendelssohn’s works, probably his best known is The Wedding March.
Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany to a respected Jewish family. He was the son of Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy and grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, a well known philosopher. Abraham wanted to renounce his Jewish religion and raised his children to be baptized as Lutherans in 1816, and that’s when Felix Mendelssohn added the names Jakob Ludwig.
His sister Fanny Mendelssohn, later known as Fanny Hensel, would also become a well-known pianist. In fact, their father Abraham thought that Fanny was more musically talented than her brother Felix, but at that time, it wasn’t considered proper etiquette for a woman to have a music career, so Fanny remained an amateur musician and composer.
Felix Mendelssohn is considered by many to be the greatest musical child prodigy other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Felix Mendelssohn began taking his first piano lessons from his mother when he was just six years old, and at age seven he was being tutored by Marie Bigot in Paris, France. In 1817 he was studying music composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin. Mendelssohn’s first public concert appearance was probably when he was nine years old and participated in a chamber music concert. He is also said to have been a very good composer as a child, writing a piano quartet and having it published by the young age of thirteen.
Mendelssohn was introduced to Goethe by Carl Friedrich Zelter, and he also took lessons later from Ignaz Moscheles, a composer and magnificent pianist. Moscheles confessed in his diaries that he didn’t have much to teach Mendelssohn, because Mendelssohn was already so good. Mendelssohn and Moscheles ended up working together often and became lifelong friends.
As a child, Mendelssohn frequently performed his works at home with a private orchestra for the friends of his wealthy parents. Felix wrote twelve string symphonies between the ages of 12 and 14 years old. The young Felix Mendelssohn was influenced tremendously by the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. These influences are evident in his twelve early symphonies which were written primarily for his private performances in his parents household, and would not be performed or published for the public until many years after his death.
In 1829, Felix Mendelssohn made his first trip to Britain, where Moscheles had already settled in London. Moscheles introduced Mendelssohn to some of the area’s most influential musical circles. Felix enjoyed a lot of success there, conducting his First Symphony and playing in private as well as public concerts. Mendelssohn made many friends in Britain, and admirers such as Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, who himself was musical.
On the death of Carl Friedrich Zelter, Mendelssohn hoped to become the conductor of the Berlin Singakademie but was defeated for the position by Karl Rungenhagen. This was probably because of how young Mendelssohn was, but some people also suspect it may have been due to his Jewish origins. Regardless, in 1835 he was appointed as the conductor for the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. This was extremely significant to him because he felt himself to be a German and he wanted to play a major part in the musical life there. Felix Mendelssohn resisted invitations to move to Berlin, and chose to stay in Leipzig instead, where he founded the Leipzig Conservatory and influenced his friends Ignaz Moscheles and Robert Schumann to join him.
As for his personal life, Felix Mendelssohn married Cécile Jeanrenaud in March of 1837. The couple had a happy marriage and five children: Carl, Marie, Paul, Felix, and Lilli. In his later years, Mendelssohn suffered from bad health, probably due in part to nervous problems and his relentless work ethic, plus the fact that he was overly saddened by the death of his sister Fanny in 1847. Felix Mendelssohn himself died in Leipzig on November 4, 1847 after having a series of strokes. He is buried in the Trinity Cemetery in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Mendelssohn's good reputation in Britain remained for many years. When the Crystal Palace was rebuilt in 1854, Queen Victoria requested that a statue of Felix Mendelssohn be placed inside. That was the only bronze statue in the Palace the only statue to survive the fire that burned down the palace in 1936. The Felix Mendelssohn bronze statue is now located in Eltham College, London. Mendelssohn's famous Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream was first played in 1858 at Princess Victoria’s (daughter of Queen Victoria) wedding to Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, and is still extremely popular today.